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Sep 10, 2012

Disaster Planning: Remote Controlled Roaches

Scientists at North Carolina State have come up with a practical use for cockroaches -- search and rescue. Where miniature robots have proved impractical and power intensive, remote controlled roaches may be just the ticket.

“Insects have a power process on them, a natural one,” Alper Bozkurt, an electrical engineer at North Carolina State University, explained to me Friday. “We just needed to supply power for communication, which is not much.”

The research builds on studies that have attached radio tags and sensors to insects to learn how their muscles work. Bozkurt and colleagues took this a step further and stimulated their muscles.

Their remote control system consists of two parts: antennae stimulators and another on their rear end.

. . .

Spurring the cockroaches to scurry forward comes via a sensor on their rear end called cerci “which senses if there is a predator trying to reach from behind. When they feel something, they just go in the forward direction to run away from the predator,” Bozkurt explained.

“So, we use that to make the insect go forward and antenna electrodes to make it go left and right.”

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About Me

LaVaughn is a psychic intuitive with clairvoyant, clairaudient, and empathic ability. She is certified in Aromatherapy by the Morris Institute of Natural Therapeutics, Crystal Therapy by the Academy of Earth's Medicine, and Sandlin Technique Bodywork by Virginia Sandlin, Cherokee Mystic and founder of the Sandlin Institute of Matrimatix.